


because it's been a year and you haven't killed me yet

by Saral_Hylor



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Anniversary, Awkward Conversations, Awkward gift giving, Gift Fic, JJ shows affection by buying random stuff, M/M, Pre-Slash, bad souvenirs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 22:30:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2286768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saral_Hylor/pseuds/Saral_Hylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had to be Stockholm Syndrome. Jensen was sure of it. There wasn’t any other reason as to why he’d survived so long without Cougar killing him. </p>
<p>Or maybe it was less Stockholm Syndrome and more like one of those situations where a puppy follows you home and it’s just pathetic enough that you feed it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	because it's been a year and you haven't killed me yet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [3White_Mage3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/3White_Mage3/gifts).



> This is a gift for 3White_Mage3, because on the 14th of August 2013 he sent me an email. It was the first, but the first of many. A year later, he was still putting up with me, and I thought that deserved a reward. So I decided to write a fic for him - needless to say, I was late getting it finished. 
> 
> So here it is, almost a month late, for my favourite Mage. I hope you continue to put up with me in the future. 
> 
> Love, SH

It had to be Stockholm Syndrome. He was sure of it. There wasn’t any other reason as to why he’d survived so long without Cougar killing him. Stockholm Syndrome and pure dumb luck. Though maybe it was less Stockholm Syndrome and more like one of those situations where a puppy follows you home, or a lamb tries to mother up to a sheep dog, and somehow it’s just pathetic enough that you feed the puppy, or the dog doesn’t try to chase the lamb away. Yeah, whatever it was, it had been a year since they’d supposed to have gone their separate ways, after getting back state side, after almost getting Max, but at least getting home, and somehow Cougar didn’t seem sick of him yet. 

Or he just wasn’t showing it yet. 

It had been a year. He could have been at his sister’s, hanging out with Jess and watching Beth grow up, but after so long away, he felt a bit like an outsider. And Cougar had agreed to let him stay with him for a little while, in the little rundown apartment he had rented, until things settled and they stopped flinching at every sudden noise and stopped reaching for the pistols and rifles that Cougar had hidden in various locations every time one of them woke up from some kind of nightmare. 

A little while had turned into a long while, and Cougar didn’t seem to mind that the sofa bed in his tiny excuse of a living room was less sofa and more bed almost all the time. Cougar didn’t complain when he didn’t sleep for days on end and drank all the coffee and raided the stashes of chocolate that Cougar had hidden around the place. He didn’t complain when there was Seventies and Eighties rock music blaring at two in the morning, and he shut the door on the neighbours who did come to complain. 

A long while turned into a longer while, and Cougar hadn’t thrown him out on his arse the times he’d woken him up because he just had to open the bedroom door and make sure Cougar was still there. The same way that Pooch didn’t hang up on him when he called him ridiculously late at night to make sure that he was still there, and Clay and Aisha grumbled that they were fine before hanging up. The same way he’d sometimes wake up to Cougar sitting on the end of his bed, TV remote in hand, but staring at the blank screen, and he’d nudge Cougar to let him know that he was awake. They’d watch late night TV, sitting up in the sofa bed pretending it was a sofa for a while, watching infomercials and repeats of terrible old shows and trying like hell to pretend that they were normal. 

They weren’t. Not by a long shot. But it helped to pretend sometimes. 

And when he acted normal he could ignore the way he felt every time he realised that they were sitting side by side on his bed, blankets on or off depending on the temperature, and he’d only be wearing boxers and whatever t-shirt he’d dragged on the day before, and Cougar would be sitting there only wearing jeans and pretending to be normal included trying not to stare at Cougar and trying not to reach out and trace all his scars and tattoos with his fingers. That wasn’t what normal friends did. 

And even he could pretend to be normal sometimes. 

So, yeah, Cougar hadn’t killed him or kicked him out and they seemed to be settling into some sort of routine which was kind of scary but mostly nice, and it was okay that Cougar always made the coffee in the morning, but he was the one who always cooked breakfast, because, when they weren’t on base or out on a mission (or dead men chasing after a voice on the radio), Cougar didn’t become a fully functioning person until around ten o’clock in the morning. And he just couldn’t wait that long for food. It was okay that they seemed overly domestic sometimes and they cooked and washed dishes together, and all that other crazy stuff. 

It was them trying to be normal and maybe Cougar just wanted to have someone else around for a time, maybe that was why he hadn’t asked him to leave yet, something like Stockholm Syndrome, even though he hadn’t actually kidnapped Cougar, there had to be a similar situation for accidentally adopting oneself a stray ex-Spec Ops techie. So, yeah, it should be recognised that one year had passed and somehow he was still there. 

Cougar was at work, and wasn’t that just something difficult to wrap his head around, a sniper trying to live a normal-ish life and getting a job and working, not entirely surprisingly, at a gun shop, but they were normal and they could do this now. Sometimes. If they tried really hard. Cougar went out and worked and came home again and all the while he just stayed there, with his computer doing freelance work for whoever wanted something coded, or something found and traced, or information gathered that they otherwise legally wouldn’t be able to get. That was just them playing at being normal everyday American citizens. 

And normal everyday citizens celebrated occasions such as anniversaries. Of friendship. Definitely of friendship and nothing else, because while they weren’t soldiers anymore, and DADT had been repealed, there was a vast difference between there not being any disciplinary ramifications, and simply not wanting to get one’s face smashed in for being overly friendly. He happened to like his face, and having Cougar as a friend. 

So, celebrating. That’s what people did. That’s what he was going to do. Which was why the apartment had been scrubbed clean from top to bottom and also why there was a number of entirely useless objects scattered around the place. Stupid things that he’d bought on a complete whim and thought – hoped – that Cougar would get the same amusement out of them as he had. Like the pale pink tablecloth, decorated with darker pink cowboy boots and hats and lassos, and the moustachioed plastic cactus that was sitting on the windowsill that started singing every time someone walked too close to it. And the random canvas print of a zebra psychedelically coloured like a rainbow that he’d put up in the living room. Or the coffee mug he’d found in a crappy souvenir shop targeted at unsuspecting overseas tourist that claimed to depict authentic Aztec art – that he knew for a fact was really Mayan – on a sticker on the base of the mug, right next to the black printed lettering that said it was made in China. It was stupid and borderline racist and he thought that Cougar would find it just as amusing as he did. 

When the time rolled around for Cougar to be home, he was sitting at the table, toying with the edge of the tablecloth, plaiting the tassels simply because he could, and maybe a little bit because when he plaited two tassels next to each other it reminded him of Jack Sparrows beard and, well, pirates were just awesome. 

He heard the door open and counted to ten before looking up and grinning at Cougar who stood in the kitchen doorway glancing around at the changes that had been made to his apartment. Grin plastered in place, he spread his arms to direct attention to everything in the room. “Whaddaya think, Cougs?”

Cougar raised a questioning eyebrow, looking pointedly around the room at the items that littered the table and windowsill.

“They’re for our strictly platonic anniversary of living together because you’ve put up with me for a year and you haven’t killed me yet.” He felt the words tumble out of his mouth and he was absolutely not twisting the edge of the pink cowboy booted tablecloth between his fingers.

Cougar gave him a look, eyebrows drawn down in exasperation, the corners of his mouth pushing out as his lips pressed together. A look that quite clearly said ‘of course I haven’t killed you yet, that’s not likely to happen any time soon’. There was something about the way that the look smoothed back off his face, the way his eyes shifted from the ‘well, duh’ look Cougar had been giving him to something else that he couldn’t pick, that he didn’t know how to place. That he wasn’t sure he dared to recognise.

There were words bubbling up his throat and erupting into the room. Words that he wasn’t entirely sure made sense, or even what they meant, something random about computer programming and maybe about terribly stereotypical souvenirs like singing cacti and Aztec mugs that were really depicting Mayan art and mass produced in China or maybe about how Cougar probably would want his sofa back and hopefully nothing that sounded like ‘please don’t ever kick me out I think I love you and I don’t know what I’d ever do if you got sick of me. I’m trying so hard to be normal and easy to get on with and please don’t hate me’. 

Except maybe he had, because Cougar was moving away from where he stood on the other side of the table. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Cougar’s face, just kept staring straight ahead, except that was about level with the bottom of Cougar’s ribs and maybe not the best place to stare either. The words jammed in his throat, coming to an abrupt stop, and probably about time too, given the usual shit he could talk when he wasn’t really thinking, because Cougar had reached out, putting his hand on the side of his neck, thumb against his pulse below his jaw, but not trying to make him look up at all, just keeping him still. Keeping him quiet. Telling him, with a touch, to shut his brain off and stop listening to all the noise inside his head, to stop worrying and to just stop. 

Stop trying to be normal because he wasn’t. 

But neither of them were and they fit together with all their broken jagged edges and PTSD nightmares and the yin yang of his noise to Cougar’s silence. 

Cougar’s thumb stroked the skin beneath his jaw as the sniper bent down and he felt lips press against the top of his head, into his hair, and he didn’t need to hear words to know that Cougar was telling him that maybe sometime during the next year he did want his sofa to go back to being a sofa and not a bed, but he wasn’t going to get that by kicking him out.

**Author's Note:**

> The terrible souvenir mug is based on one from Australia, where there were mugs being sold with "authentic Australian Aboriginal art" on them, depicting boomerangs and fish and dugongs, that were being almost 3,000 kms south of where any of those things were even relevant too. So other than being really not local at all, there was the sticker proclaiming it was authentic Australian Aboriginal art, right next to the printing on the mug saying "made in China". It came across as very amusing.


End file.
